Thailand

Preface

As you might have read in my resume I have worked in Thailand from June 1993 to May 1998. I would like to share my experience about being an expatriate to you on the next few pages. This article is not intended to upset anyone and if it does so, I apologise right away, but I think the information in here might be important for everyone thinking about working in Thailand.

Searching for a job in Thailand

Before I set out on the journey I needed a job, and because in 1993 I worked with the PROGRESS Database System which I liked quite a bit, I decided to send an application letter to the NCR Thailand, which happened to be the distributor for PROGRESS. Soon I got an answer back, that they would be interested to work with me. "That was easy", I thought by myself and sent all the necessary documents to them. Then, for weeks I did not hear anything, which is a bit annoying when you are about to "move" countries. So I called and indeed got someone on the phone. She was the executive secretary and her name was Duangdao. She told me, that she happened to know, that her boss changed his mind and did not want to employ me anymore, but instead of telling me which would have had him "lose his face" he hoped that I would just forget about it. Duangdao said that would be a quite normal thing in Asia and I should get used to it. But she also said that she had some quite good connections to the IT-Business of Thailand and whether she should send me some addresses?

Of course I agreed and soon after I got a letter with many addresses. So off I went to send applications to some companies which looked interesting to me, one of which was CIMCO Ltd. They answered very quickly and the Fax read like this "We are very interested in working with you. When can you start? The rest we will sort out once you are here. Best regards, Victor Batchelor, Managing Director". For me as a German this looked far too fishy, so I called this Mr. Batchelor. Much to my surprise he turned out to be a very correct British with just not enough time to write long letters. We had a nice, long talk and after that I was confident that CIMCO was the right company for me.

I called Duangdao and told her the good news and that I wanted to see her when I would be in Bangkok.

Then I started selling all my stuff including my beloved keyboards. I quit my job and left Germany on 16th of June 1993.